One of my long life goals is to create my own chess set.  More than likely, it will be made of of LEGO bricks.  Here’s a set based on LEGO Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandongriffith/sets/72157624770160743/with/4964655609/

I converted over the games from the old php-nuke site to wordpress.  Let me know if you have any problems.

http://sixf00t4.com/games/

I’ve been away from the game long enough that some of you may not know my involvement in the free online role playing game, Legend of the Green Dragon.  This weekend, June 4th  (6/4), a bunch of players are getting back on as a sort of reunion, and I thought it might be a good time to share the link with you in preparation.

It’s a fun text based game, that is energized a lot by players interacting with one another and taking on the role of the character they set up.  As the creator of the site, I took on the role of the king.  You should join us this weekend if you’ve never played! Here’s the announcement from the site:

Hear ye, Hear ye
In the Sixth month and on the fourth day of this very year…

There shall be a gathering.. a reunion.. of those that once shared a fate,
A fate so epic that it has bound them,
One to the other, throughout all eternity.

They come one by one, from the depths of the sea,
From the heights of the mountains and treetop dwellings.
From castles and keeps, temples and catacombs
From the peaks of mount Olympus
And the hidden shadows of the underdark.

They gather from shore to shore..
To be united once again in the Land of Six.

Yes.. The KING Sixf00t4 has vowed he, himself, would be honored
To make an appearance at such a gathering
Of some of the finest warriors the gods have ever known…
Join us on June 4th!
For this too shall be an Epic Adventure!

When you sign up, enter one of the following codes to receive bonus gold or gems!

‘reuniongold‘ will net you 10k gold
‘reuniongems‘ will net you 10 gems.

You may have noticed the new page – Words With Josh

I play words with friends (a scrabble rip-off basically) with a few people on my iphone, and I wanted to wrap some intelligence around finding the optimal word based off what letters were already played.  Now, I do not condone the act of cheating when you’re playing the game.  I was more intrigued at the logic that your brain does to determine what words to play.  Scrabble is a measurable science, and there is always a best word to play, it’s just a matter of whether you know that word and whether you recognize where to place it.

I at first wanted to write a complete scrabble game, that would track the entire board and value changing tiles, so that you could play against a computer.  I could still do that, but I would think that no one really wants to play scrabble by themselves, right?

So I set off to at least code what could be useful -IF- you decided to use it as a reference tool.  I made a version available through the blog but also a better mobile version for iphones and such here – http://sixf00t4.com/wordswithjosh.  Give it a shot.  It will help you find anagrams, words with letters in specific places, and even includes the option for blank tiles.  I was thinking about adding the functionality to set letter spaces as score modifiers (triple letter, double word, etc), but I got lazy and really just satisfied with what I have now.  It’s all php and mysql.  Let me know what you think!

Here’s another video game idea that actually came to me as a result of a dream.  In the dream, I’m in a big city landscape, being chased down by military and such.  I end up stealing a Gatling gun and taking a bunch of them out at a time and then running away on roof tops and such.

So here’s the game idea.  Think Grand Theft Auto meets Streets of Rage 2.  It’s just a game of survival set in a city with lots of cars, fire escapes, roof tops, lamp posts, etc.  You start off walking down the street, either looking for fights, or fights are looking for you.  Like, you walk by a guy, you can get the party started right there and punch him in the face.  Or even some guy comes and mugs you.  Someone joins in to help him.  Someone else calls 911.  The cops come, they call for swat.  swat comes and they call in the national guard.  helicopters come in.  more and more men.  barricades are set up.

You have your choice of a few characters, each with their own specialties:

• Athletic karate chick – Quick, agile.  She can’t take a lot of damage.  I’m thinking there’s a UI (user interface) for points where she can grab on to.  Like a little “shiny spot that glimmers” on a lamp post or ladder.  You’d have her run at it and jump, she could grab on there and either climb to higher spots easily, or catapult herself at enemies.
• Big strong dude – He can take a lot of damage, but he’s slow.  He can’t fit in cars to drive them around, but he can pick them up and throw them.  He can break off lamp posts and swing them around.
• Weapons expert/PC Hacker – Probably comes equipped with tons of guns and bombs and such, but he/she can also use all the guns of the military and fly their helicopters.  Maybe something like being able to hear where the military is forming and planning next.  Maybe something like being able to shut down the powergrid and fighting in the dark with night vision goggles.
• Rich dude with political/social connections – Whatever you want, it’s at your finger tips.  You can make a call and have the military called off, you can call for someone to pick you up in a helicopter and take you away, you have your own body guard(s) that fight people off.

It’d be an arcade type of scoring, the point is just to get the biggest score/stay alive the longest/kill the most enemies.  The unique things to the game would be the “cooperation” moves when playing with multiple players.  the rich dude can order some awesome weapons that only the weapons expert can use.  the strong dude can throw the weapons dude at a helicopter for him to take it over.  The hacker can broadcast a message for the rich dude to the media to get news copters and reporters on the scene  (that would increase points multiplier as well as change difficulty).

Unique game play additions would be with media coverage.  If you’re on the news, people will come out and fight with you maybe.  You’re also less likely to die in front of a news camera.

Maybe the game takes a little bit of a riot/revolution plot.  Each character has a back story with why they need to fight against the government.  You start riots in cities across the country/globe, unlocking more and more cities until you get to the capital.  Maybe once you get the riots started in the city, you have to sneak away someone to the next city to get it started.

I’d play it.  Sounds like the multi-player would be where all the fun is.

Spurred from Hall’s Rule of Social Order #103.

The Ramones did it.  Tom Delonge did it.  Some fans say it’s like wearing uniforms in sports.

Some fans think’s it silly that you can wear a sport jersey to a game, but you can’t wear a band’s tshirt to their concert.  Maybe it’s a point of if the fans can’t do it, the band can’t do it either.

Probably very much to do about the pens loss last night to the montreal canadiens in game 6, I had a dream I was playing in the game.  I was the stand-by goalie, and we were down 3-4 in the second when I was put in to replace Fluery.  I was amazing.  So much so, that I deflected a shot so hard that it flew directly into the other goal to tie the game.  Yes, I’m that powerful.  Then, in the third period,  I was on offense.  For some reason, I was also frozen in the ice at the waist down, at about half-rink.  With about 3 seconds left in the game, I busted out of the ice and skated to the net, caught a pass and directed it right into the goal to win 5-4.  It was great, I was so shocked, people were so happy with me, but we all understood that it was just a fluke and that I’d go back to my normal life after the game. 

Had a dream about a video game last night.  It was a free roam world, 3rd person, kind of like the game Black & White.  All the characters were animals and you had to interact with them to learn "concepts" like trading, communication, hiring, etc to get things done.  The point was just to create a community that worked together and you got to chose how they worked together, whether through strict government policies, violence, friendly favors, etc.  It was a very cartoonish and humorous game.  The animals were very personified.

So that was the extent of the dream, and then I started thinking about this more and fleshing it out.  As far as names for the game, the first thought was "Orgz" since it’s catchy and could be short for ‘organization" or "organisms".  My next thought was for a sub-title, which was something like "All animals are created equal.  some are just more equal than others."  Which is an obvious lending from the book Animal Farm  by George Orwell.  Then, you’d have to consider the legal ramifications, but it would be a great opportunity to base the game on the book and just call it Animal Farm.  You could use all kind of quotes from the book like "2 legs are better than 4".

You could pick from a few animals as your character, each with their own personalities and benefits:

Duck – Everyone’s friend since they are in the air, water, and on land.  They’re pretty emotionally unstable and irational though.  They also can’t do much hard labor.

Horse – Very stern and a strong laborer.  Things are the way they are because they should be that way.  Not cooperative or open to change or creative inovation.

Dog – Smart and analytical.  Able to organize (herd) everyone to action by motivation (not fear).  Sometimes distracted by leisure instead of work.

So the goal of the game would be to run a farm, but it’s really more of town exchanging goods and services.  Like, the pigs have bacon to trade, you don’t actually kill the pigs for their bacon, you talk with them and work out something in exchange, like X amount of mud for Y amount of bacon.  Keep the pigs happy, and they’ll give you more bacon.  you could even get a little more complex about designing the layout of the farm.  Keep the cats away from the muddy pigs so they’ll chase the mice out of the barn.  A sense of humor will determine the success of the game, so you have to put in a lot of witty things like being able to open a petting zoo for money, but none of the animals like being extorted like that (form of prostitution).  Or humans coming in and offering to outsource your cow production items like milking, meat packing, etc.  Cows would be really stupid in the game.  Really stupid.

Sitting around a friend’s house Saturday, Nick, Andy, and I had a fleeting idea for a new business.  We’ll call it Retro’s.  It’s a store where they have every video game console available for you to play.  You’d have to have the systems behind a case, and only employees are allowed to handle them.  Patrons can come in, pay a membership fee or some equivalent to play any game from the library of video games you have in stock.  Now, the cool part is, as you’re starting out, you, of course, want to build an inventory.  So, you barter membership time for game titles or systems that you do not currently have in stock.  Eventually, you’d have a pretty awesome collection of all kinds of games and systems, and you didn’t really have to do work for it at all.

In recent sports news, Grapevine Faith played Gainesville State School in football, but the fans from Faith rooted for the other team.  The formed a line for the other team to run through at the beginning of the game, the made a sign for them to bust through, and cheered for them throughout the game.  Was this some kind of reverse logic to the Yale "We Suck" prank?  Nope.  This was a good deed, since Gainesville is a correctional institution, and even those players deserve to have some cheering.

Why does something so right, seem so upside down?